actor
Personal Information
Born c. 1960, in Portland, ME; foster child of Robert and Agatha Armstead; married Tom Fahey, 1989 (divorced, c. 1990), Wynton Marsalis, c. 1996; children: Maya (first marriage), Jasper Armstrong (second marriage).
Education: Graduated from Shaw Preparatory School, Boston, MA, 1979. Eight years of formal dance training at the Cambridge School of Ballet in Cambridge, MA.
Career
Began dancing professionally with the American Ballet Theatre II Company, 1979; retired from dance in 1983; reentered the field shortly thereafter at the Ballet Hispanico of New York and the Twyla Tharp Workshop; began modeling, c. 1984; began acting, 1985; appeared in television shows, including The Cosby Show (recurring role), The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Herman's Head, and Deadly Games, with principal roles in The Young and the Restless, and Diagnosis Murder; appeared in short films, including The Last Set, One Red Rose, and Dr. Hugo; appeared in feature films, including Leonard 6, The Distinguished Gentleman, Dumb and Dumber, and Barb Wire.
Life's Work
Although not yet a star, Victoria Rowell is one of the hardest working actresses in Hollywood. She plays Drucilla Barber Williams on CBS's daytime drama The Young and the Restless, as well as Dr. Amanda Bently Livingston on CBS's Diagnosis Murder. Add to that several roles in feature films and two children to raise, and the outcome is exhausting--not to mention the nine months she did it all with a baby on the way. "I'm a workaholic," she confessed to Soap Opera Magazine's Robert Waldron, and there is a reason for it. Rowell did not have it easy growing up as a foster child, but she was raised with the ethic that hard work paid off. And she always had someone who believed in her.
Victoria Rowell was born in Portland, Maine, in the early 1960s. Her mother, Dorothy Rowell, a white woman; Rowell's father, a man named Wilson, was black. She never knew him. It is unclear why Dorothy gave Victoria up after 16 days; however, it has been suggested that it was due to pressure from her white family. At first Rowell went to live with a white foster family, but was removed from the home to join a black family when she was two and a half. Robert and Agatha Armstead, whom Rowell came to consider as her own family, had also taken in Rowell's two older sisters, Sheree and Lori. Rowell was unaware of the existence of her three half brothers until she was a teenager. They were the products of two other fathers and had been raised by their dads.
Rowell met her biological mother on three occasions before Dorothy died around 1985. But Agatha Armstead was mom. "My foster mother was an amazing woman," she told N. F. Mendoza in the Los Angeles Times. "She was a self-sufficient widow who had already raised ten of her own children. When she had the three of us, she was a senior citizen. She also ran a 60-acre farm." Armstead was the person who made Rowell feel love and support as she grew up in little Lebanon, Maine.
At a very early age Armstead discovered Rowell's interest in ballet, and she encouraged it. By age eight, without any formal training or appropriate clothing, Rowell received the Ford Foundation Scholarship to the Cambridge School of Ballet in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Armstead arranged for Rowell to live with relatives in order to retain her scholarship, but it still meant moving to four other foster families to pursue her dream.
That time was often terribly hard for Rowell. As she told People, "At times I felt unwelcome, but ... I did whatever I had to do to keep my ballet scholarship." And, as she assured TV Guide about getting through, "Sweat, baby, sweat! I was not raised to sit around thinking `coulda, woulda, shoulda.'" Often times dance and family love was all that kept her going. She explained in Soap Opera Update, "If you have something that anchors you, if you have a love of art, or a love of science or a love of sports or music, then that is yours and no one can take that away. I moved to various homes.... Even though they were interconnected families, I still had to uproot and move, which was difficult. But I always had my ballet slippers. They went everywhere that I went."
Rowell was often teased by other kids in her new inner city environment for taking ballet. And the ballet school insisted that at 5'7" Rowell keep her weight under 100 pounds. She recalled to Deborah Gregory in Essence, "They told me to lose weight, tuck my hips under or stand taller on point. A Black woman's body was just unacceptable to them." And to People, "You'd be surprised how some of us could go all day eating nothing but string beans."
By the age of 16, after eight years of formal training, Rowell received scholarships both to the School of American Ballet and the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She graduated from Boston's private Shaw Preparatory School, where she had a scholarship, in 1979. She then moved to New York and began dancing professionally with the American Ballet Theatre II Company. The early 1980s were a time of partying for the fashionable ballet dancers; although Rowell experimented here and there and enjoyed the nightlife at famous clubs like Studio 54, she was a moderate partier. Many times her friends called her "square" for not joining in.
Life as a ballerina was a disillusionment to Rowell. As a biracial women, many classical dance roles were denied her, and she was usually segregated to the ethnic roles. Although a series of cross- country tours and an exchange program with the Julliard School of Music gave Rowell the opportunity to explore the United States, the lack of appropriate guidance and the frustration of being overlooked for classical roles inspired her to quit the ABT in 1983, just three years after joining.
After some travel throughout Europe, Rowell decided to return to dance with the Ballet Hispanico of New York and the Twyla Tharp Workshop. During this time a modeling career suddenly opened up for Rowell. Spotted by an agent during a performance, she soon began gracing the pages of Seventeen--"I was their stock black model," she told People, Mademoiselle, and several other publications. But in time she chose to accept some guest artist performing arts teaching posts in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
In 1985 Rowell returned to New York to try her hand at acting; although this had not been a planned career goal, it seemed to develop naturally out of modeling. She began a lucrative commercial career and appeared in campaigns for Burger King, McDonalds, AT&T, and most recently, Oil of Olay. But the big break came when she auditioned to be one of Bill Cosby's daughters on The Cosby Show. Although she did not get the role, Cosby liked her so much he put her in his feature film Leonard 6. The movie was a flop but Cosby eventually found a spot for the young actress on his, by then, incredibly successful show. Rowell played the mother of Cosby's step-grandaughter played by Raven Symone.
Meanwhile, in 1989, Rowell married Tom Fahey, an airline pilot. Shortly before the birth of their daughter, Maya, Rowell and Fahey divorced. Their blonde, blue-eyed daughter--Fahey is white--has caused many an uncomfortable moment when strangers insist she cannot be Rowell's daughter. The nurse in the hospital infuriated Rowell by not giving her the baby until she had checked and rechecked the wrist band identification. Being the daughter of a mixed couple herself, Rowell is careful to teach Maya about all of her heritage. When asked her color, Maya responds, "black and white." That's another problem with the foster care system, according to Rowell. At two and a half she was uprooted from the care of a white family because the system felt it would be better for her to grow up in a black family, even though she was just as much white as black.
Maya's birth coincided with Rowell's TV success. While she and Maya were visiting Fahey in Los Angeles, Rowell's wonderful range on The Cosby Show got her an audition for The Young and the Restless. She got the job and relocated to Los Angeles. At first African American audience members were angry at the negative stereotype that Rowell was putting across as Drucilla, but she was not bothered. "I knew there was going to be a transformation," she explained to Gregory in Essence. "It was scripted that Drucilla would turn her life around. She would learn to read and write, get a job--and study ballet."
In 1990 Rowell was finally able to give back to the foster care system that had made her so strong. She formed the Rowell Foster Children's Positive Plan, which sponsors foster children specifically studying ballet, basketball, or tennis. Each year eight to ten children receive full scholarships including classes, wardrobe, and excursions. "My message to children is to try to find a focal point, an interest in their lives," she explained to Beth Haiken in Soap Opera Update. "By offering the children the [program], we're offering what hopefully worked for me, which is-- this is yours, love it."
In addition, Rowell is a chairperson of the Los Angeles-based Foster Youth Connection, a haven for former foster children who have reached 18, thereby aging out of the system. She also lobbies in Washington, D.C., for the Welfare League of America, actively works for the United Way, the Departments of Social Services in various states, and the Women's Physical Abuse Center in Bermuda.
As if all that work were not enough, since 1993 Rowell has played pathologist Dr. Amanda Bently Livingston on Diagnosis Murder who, with the shows star Dick Van Dyke and actor Scott Baio, loves to perform detective work on the side. Diagnosis Murder gives Rowell the chance to show off her funny side. "I love my night job," she said in her Baker-Winokur-Ryder press materials, "I get to hold my own amongst a cast of men." And to Elinor Tatum of the New York Amsterdam News, I really covet that role, being a black actress playing a professional role such as a pathologist."
Rowell has also appeared in movies opposite Eddie Murphy as his lobbyist girlfriend in the Distinguished Gentleman, as an undercover cop in the blockbuster comedy Dumb and Dumber, and as freedom fighter Cora D. in 1996's Barb Wire--a film adaptation of the comic book by the same name, which she filmed while pregnant with her second child Jasper. But Rowell likes life this way. In her press material she surmised, "I'm certain if I stopped working as hard as I do, I'd get a fever."
Rowell also has no intention of giving up her day job. "I'm very happy at Young and the Restless," she assured Mendoza in the Los Angeles Times. "I don't see the soap as a vehicle or a step into stardom or features. To me, it's all one process. Work is work." The producers at both of her shows have been extremely helpful coordinating her schedule. After several hours in the early morning at Y & R, she troops on over to Diagnosis Murder for another few hours.
She also believes very strongly in family, having that instilled in her by her foster mom. Luckily, Rowell's ex-husband and she have a relationship that allows them to spend time together for Maya's sake. He's been a great father according to Rowell and remains very much a part of their lives. Maya got a stepdad and two stepbrothers when her mother married jazz great Wynton Marsalis. Baby brother Jasper was born just after Christmas in 1996.
Because her foster family experience was such a positive one, Rowell told Tatum that she would like to go back to school and "get more involved in the politics and become more knowledgeable in terms of social work. I want to make a difference in foster care.... Legislatively, I need to get more involved, and I do have a voice as a result of this wonderful gift of being able to act."
Rowell would also like to write a book or a screenplay. And she probably will because someone taught her well. Her foster mother "was such a magnificent woman, so full of life--and so enterprising," Rowell told Gregory. "She taught me and my sisters that hard work and being independent are very important in life." It's a motto by which Victoria Rowell lives quite well.
Awards
An Emmy nomination, three NAACP Image Awards, and a Soap Opera Digest Award for The Young and the Restless; and an NAACP Image Award nomination for Diagnosis Murder.
Further Reading
- Amsterdam News (New York), May 25, 1996.
- Black Elegance, November/December 1992, p. 42.
- Ebony, August 1995.
- Essence, September 1995.
- Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1994, p. F1; September 10, 1995, p. 21.
- Maine Sunday Telegram, February 24, 1991.
- People, February 1, 1993, pp. 94-95.
- Soap Opera Digest, August 16, 1994, p. 29.
- Soap Opera Magazine, January 2, 1996.
- Soap Opera Update, June 11, 1996.
- Total TV, May 18, 1996.
- TV Guide, December 10, 1994.
- Venice (CA), November/December 1992, pp. 36-37.
- Additional information for this profile was obtained from press materials from Baker-Winokur-Ryder Public Relations, 1996.
— Joanna Rubiner
